The Witch of Cologne

by Tobsha Learner

  ‘I will not lose you.’ His words sound out like a vow. ‘Against all nature I will not lose you.’

  Tuvia’s throat is dry. He has been sitting for six hours in the back of the wagon, hands gripping the sides to stop himself being bounced around like a herring in a fishing net. At his feet is a bag containing his prayer shawl, his Tefillah and the tools of circumcision. The journey was successful, despite the arduous route they had to take to avoid the plague-ridden villages beyond the border. The household Tuvia visited was orthodox, like the one he envisages for Ruth and himself: a happy home with a modest wife, an adoring husband, bread on the table and salted beef hanging in the parlour, a sanctuary from a hostile world. The brith was executed well: the baby was robust and the young father ecstatic to have his first-born a male. But just after the circumcision a vision came to Tuvia, the Tetragrammaton in the form of fiery letters dancing over the crib. Tuvia, not unaccustomed to the call of the unknown, had attempted to read the future of the new-born boy in the leaping flames, as is the custom, but the scarlet-blue colour did not bode well. Lying, he told the father the child had a great life ahead, perhaps as a statesman for his people. But the experience frightened the mohel, tainting the excitement he felt about returning to Deutz.

  Exhausted, he sinks back against the cart, mesmerised by the swinging flanks of the huge draughthorses in front. He closes his eyes, lulled by the rocking. The cry of a startled pheasant flying out from a low holly bush jolts him awake. He recognises the small wooden bridge ahead and immediately the thrill of seeing Ruth sets him trembling despite his immense weariness.

  The sound of the horses’ hooves turns to a hollow clamour as they cross the small stream. When the cottage comes into full view Tuvia sinks down low. He wants to surprise her. He wants to see the dream he has of her running towards him with delight made real. In his travelling sack is a stomacher embroidered with gold he bought from a seamstress in Maastricht. It is of a deep maroon velvet which he chose to set off her raven hair. She will wear it for him, of this he is as sure as the knowledge that the sun rises in the morning.

  It is then that he spies the intruder, the German he saw in the town the morning of his departure. The tall man steps out of the back door of the cottage then moves back into the shadows as if he wishes to hide. But it is too late. Tuvia immediately recognises the uncovered head and the distinctive gait despite the old cloak and the worn workman’s breeches. Detlef von Tennen, the canon from the cathedral. The last time Tuvia saw him was with the soldiers who came to make the arrests: then the man had gleamed arrogantly with power and beauty, sitting high on his bay horse with aristocratic superiority. Now he is a furtive stranger at the door of the woman Tuvia loves. But why? For a moment the young man is paralysed by the fear of what might have happened to Ruth. Then, as he watches in horror, the midwife appears behind the Christian cleric. Wrapping her arms around him she pulls him back into the doorway. Tuvia, now quivering with nausea, vomits over the side of the cart into the gutter.

  Rosa, standing at the window, cries out when she sees the young rabbi, his face flaming red, stumble off the cart clutching his bags. Running out of the house, parsnip peelings scattering from her long apron, the nursemaid barely catches the thin young man as he collapses.

  ‘Tuvia, Tuvia, what is it? You are burning with fever! Mein Gott!’

  ‘What I have seen would make any man blaze! It is unforgivable! She must burn! She must burn!’

  Rosa glances around fearfully then claps her hand over his mouth. She hoists Tuvia’s skinny arm across her sturdy shoulder.

  ‘Hush with these blasphemies, Master Tuvia! A dybbuk has got your tongue.’

  She marches him inside and after leaving him resting on a low day bed, runs to the front door and bolts it securely.

  Elazar walks painfully from the yeshiva across the road to his house. The lecture he gave the eager-faced young boys—a sermon on the story of Esther who forfeited her life for her people, his favourite metaphor of self-sacrifice—echoes in his mind. Having noticed some restlessness amongst his pupils, a motley group of sharp-witted boys ranging from five to twelve, he wonders whether he is losing his oratorial skills. There was a time when he could keep a class spellbound with his stories, Biblical parables ornamented with homespun proverbs and little illustrations incorporating local folklore. Thus Joseph became Jupp and the bulrushes an inlet on the Rhine, with Elazar using humour to describe the character of each religious pedant in rabbinical debates about the points of the Torah. But recently the rabbi has become painfully aware of his shortness of breath and the glazed looks from his pupils which tell him he has just repeated the very same allegory without realising.

  He must teach Tuvia some of his tricks. Tuvia will make a good teacher, if a little fanatical. I will have to be firm, Tuvia must not use the classroom to promulgate his zealot notions, the old man thinks as he avoids a goat which has stubbornly planted itself in the centre of the narrow road.

  The rabbi arrives at his house only to find that the door is bolted from within. He knocks at the window with his stick. No answer. Irritated that he will have to make his old legs walk further to enter from the back lane he kicks impatiently at a stone.

  ‘Rosa! Rosa!’ he shouts, finally standing in the empty kitchen. On the table is a half-chopped onion and a bowl of whey covered with a muslin cloth. Elazar listens to the rest of the house, his grey head cocked like an ancient bird. It is then that he notices Tuvia’s travelling sack in the corner of the room, the prayer shawl spilling out. Dread falls across the elder like a sudden chill.

  Tuvia lies on the pallet, his breath a jagged rhythm. His face above his thin beard is the colour of a grey mushroom. Incongruously he is clutching an ornately embroidered maroon stomacher against his chest. A jug of cold water and mint leaves sits on the floor beside him. Rosa, her heavy body melted in an exhausted sprawl, snores in a chair in the corner.

  As Elazar leans over him, Tuvia begins muttering in a feverish voice, his tone so vicious that for a moment the old rabbi wonders if the young man is possessed. ‘He was with her, my love, my love…they have lain together, she and the German…the one from the cathedral. I shall kill him! Kill him!’

  As he tosses about, the nightshirt rides up above his chest and Elazar sees the ugly rings of red sores which have begun to blossom. He has seen these marks only once before but they are unmistakable. Cautiously he lifts a lock of Tuvia’s curly black hair to reveal a hideous bulbous pustule swelling below his ear.

  ‘He has a fever,’ Rosa says, startling the old man. Now fully awake she stretches herself wearily. ‘And is talking nonsense…dangerous nonsense.’

  Elazar pulls down Tuvia’s gown before Rosa has a chance to see the lesions. ‘It will not be the nonsense that kills him.’

  The rabbi’s sharp tone makes Rosa sit up; she has never heard him sound so stern.

  ‘Close the shutters and send a boy for Isaac Schlam and for my daughter immediately!’

  ‘But Elazar, she has done nothing wrong. Tuvia is just voicing his fears—’

  ‘It is not what he is saying that I am frightened of, but what he is dying from.’

  ‘Dying? He will be well by morning.’

  ‘Rosa, this is not a fever. Go, go!’

  After she leaves Tuvia stirs. ‘Water…water…’

  Carefully Elazar pours out a glass and holds it up to the young man’s lips. He drinks feebly then collapses back on the pillow, clutching at Elazar’s hand. Elazar, battling horror, lets Tuvia pull him to his skinny sweaty chest.

  ‘I saw them, Reb, together.’

  ‘Who, my son?’

  ‘Ruth and the cleric, the German cleric…they have lain together…’

  ‘These are the illusions of Bileth the devil, Tuvia. You must resist. And you must rest.’

  As Tuvia slips back into unconsciousness the old man covers his head with his prayer shawl. Binding his Tefillah around his forehead he begins to berate God for his injustice.


  The razor-sharp blade cuts into the puffy sore leaving a scarlet path behind it. The green-yellow pus welling out of it immediately fills the room with a foul stink. Working quickly Ruth drains the pustule and wipes down Tuvia’s shaking torso; his protruding ribs are a pitiful birdcage of pain.

  ‘Have you told the elders?’ She dares not look at her father who sits at the end of the bed rocking in his grief.

  ‘The declaration has been made. The door is bolted, the sign is hung.’ He in turn is unable to meet her eyes.

  ‘We shall isolate the sick if it spreads.’ Isaac Schlam, the doctor, his face a map of anxiety, speaks in a resigned voice. ‘What more can we do?’ he continues, handing Ruth a poultice which she places carefully on the incision.

  ‘Pray,’ Elazar replies.

  Suddenly Tuvia’s eyes fly open, pale blue coals in a face of grey, his pupils unfocused dancing black beads. He sits bolt upright in the bed and points wildly at the door.

  ‘The Messiah is here! Reb Zevi, I honour you!’ he shouts.

  Immediately the old rabbi is by his side. ‘Tuvia, you must stay calm. Rest, my son.’

  ‘But Zevi is there, in the burning chariot! He has heard my prayers, he has the angels with him. They are here to take me to the Holy Land!’ He twists violently, calling out, ‘Welcome!’

  ‘Lie still, do not waste your strength.’

  But Tuvia pays no heed, gazing with absolute certainty into space.

  ‘The burning chariot is so beautiful, Reb Saul, I can feel its glory hot on my skin and the angels are huge with arms that could carry a nation. Adiriron, Zoharariel, Zavodiel and Ta’zash with his long black beard—they are here for all of us! To free us at last! Take me! Take me!’

  With one supreme effort he raises himself up towards his vision, his eyes fastened on nothing but the evening’s shadows, then falls back against the pillows, dead.

  The contraption, made of light wood with black woollen fabric stretched across its frame and leather bindings, lies on the table like the abandoned false limb of an amputee. The strong smell of herbs—rosemary, cloves, aniseed—and the pungent scent of civet fills the whole chamber. Detlef, his morning robes thrown on, stands near the window trying to breathe what little clean air is filtering in. Heinrich enters hurriedly followed by two valets and a sombre-looking man Detlef recognises as a medic.

  Heinrich marches straight over to the table. ‘Is this it?’

  The medic lifts the device and now Detlef can see that it is some form of headpiece in the shape of a long beak, the straps of which are to be fastened around the head.

  ‘Yes, your grace, fashioned in the London style. They swear that it renders the wearer completely impervious to both the stench and spore of the scourge.’

  The archbishop clicks his fingers and the two valets move forward. Together they lift the contraption and fasten it carefully around Heinrich’s head. In his long green robe he looks like the mad offspring of a parrot and a demonic rook.

  ‘Heinrich, at what strange pageant do you intend to wear this mask?’

  Detlef, amused, steps forward.

  Heinrich, swinging around to face his cousin, almost knocks the head off one of his long-suffering valets with the long beak. He makes a muffled comment, realises that he cannot be heard and pushes the contraption up to his forehead where it sits like a flaccid cockscomb.

  ‘The pageant of death, cousin. Where have you been? You obviously missed the proclamation this morning. It was rung out all over the city.’

  ‘What proclamation?’

  ‘The plague! The first house has been barred up and painted with the red cross.’

  He turns to his cleric. ‘Make a record of the date: August twenty-ninth of the year of our good Lord 1665.’

  Shocked, Detlef hurries to the door. ‘We must make haste—the pesthouse must be opened up, the sick must be collected. We have to issue plague orders, the dogs and cats must be eradicated, everything must be done to stop the infectious vapours spreading—’

  ‘You will go nowhere, Detlef! As a Wittelsbach it is your responsibility to protect yourself and your lineage. Retire to the country immediately, that is my advice. I myself am off to Bonn.’

  ‘You think you can escape the disease by leaving?’

  ‘Indeed, with the help of this wondrous device which I shall wear happily in a closed carriage all the way out of the city. In the meantime I have left instructions with Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg and the rest of the council as to the running of the cathedral in my absence, as well as the pesthouse—which has already started to stink with the ailing.’

  ‘With all due respect, your grace, you must realise that the city needs its greatest shepherd in this its darkest hour…’

  ‘And as their shepherd I have every intention of being there afterwards, when the disease has left the city and we have the mending of souls and the rebuilding of families to attend to.’

  ‘But even the archbishop of London chose to stay with his parishioners—’

  ‘Do I care? The protection of my health so that I may attend the living and the bereaved after the Black Death has left this city is more important. In other words, Detlef, I intend to survive. Now make haste!’

  Maximilian Heinrich pushes the mask firmly back down and sweeps out of the room, his attendants following.

  September, 1665

  Dear Benedict,

  The plague is now upon us. Many have fallen in Cologne: it is said that nearly a quarter of the populace has perished. Here in Deutz we have lost some but not in such large numbers. Miriam and I assist the good doctor Schlam, toiling night and day to tend to the dying. These we have isolated and I believe it is this segregation and the custom of our people to wash daily that has saved many. But a death is a death and our burden is increased by the fact that Cologne has closed its gates and the flow of grain and provisions across the Rhine, upon which our town depends, has ceased.

  Tuvia ben Ibraham, my father’s assistant, was one of the first to perish. His death has left my father much diminished. It is as if the last vestige of my father’s hope died with him. The rabbi has not spoken since and spends many hours alone in the temple, not praying but whispering to ghosts. I fear for his sanity but have not the vigour to attend to him like a good daughter. Instead, when I am not administering to the sick, I like many, search the forest for mushroom, wild fowl, dandelion, anything we can place into our starving bellies. My own hunger is twofold, but of that I cannot speak.

  If you have any comforting advice or word of wisdom in these dark times, please write. I can feast on one of your philosophies for many days.

  In friendship,

  ‘Felix van Jos’

  There is nothing to seal the letter with. She cannot send it anyway for all transportation has stopped between the Rhineland and the Netherlands. She touches her neat script in wonder. How can her hand remain so steady after these last four moons? Even unsent the letter comforts her. It is an echo of life before, a ritual which gives inward definition to a frenzied world in which chaos has flown down the chimney and everything is broken. Almost broken.

  Ruth picks up a small stone from the table and begins sucking it. It helps ward off the nauseating hunger which gnaws constantly at her belly. The cheap tallow candle, virtually melted, splutters, sending a puff of acrid smoke towards the blackened ceiling. The cottage is nearly unrecognisable in its disorder: bunches of herbs are strewn across the floor, their stems plucked entirely clean and boiled several times over; an eaten carcass of a rabbit hangs from the curing spit, barely a thread of flesh left on it. One muddy tree root, still half-covered with earth, squats like an animal dropping in front of the huge stone hearth, now empty. Scattered across the table where she is sitting are a few dandelions and a bouquet of straggly nettles. The only clean space is the one she has created immediately around her, a small kingdom in which the single page of parchment reigns.

  Outside Ruth hears the bell of the Hevra Kadisha cart as they go to collect an
other corpse. She does not allow herself to wonder who it is. All such thoughts stopped with Tuvia’s death; there has not been time, the containment of the disease has absorbed her waking hours and stolen all her dreams.

  Until now, twenty deaths and four full moons later. This day she was called to the house of the tailor, the very same father whose son she delivered after her first night with Detlef. The sight of Herr Rechtschild’s pallid face creased in agony, the telltale lumps blossoming like poisonous fruit below his neck, jolted her back to the night of the delivery when her body still sang with Detlef’s touch. Before this moment, Ruth has not allowed herself to dwell on either memory or hope. Since the gates of the walled city were sealed there is no way of getting news in or out of Cologne. Ruth does not know whether Detlef is still in residence, or even if he lives.

  The candle splutters and finally dies. Now only moonlight filtering through the dusty windows illuminates the room. Ruth, her body racked with exhaustion, stands in its rays. Glancing down at her ragged dress stained with soil and sweat, she cannot imagine that once a man loved her, and that the grieving sleepwalkers who now roam the lanes were once human and in their humanity were once also loved.

  She pulls the dress over her head and lets it slip to the ground then steps out of her filthy petticoat. She stands naked. Her breasts are ripe, the nipples a dark wine. She cups her swelling womb and closes her eyes, feeling for the growing child beneath.

  Condensation drips down the grey-green stone walls of the pesthouse. Oblivious to the human agony below, a swallow tends to the mud nest she has wedged precariously between two wooden rafters. Beneath the industrious bird lie row after row of the infirm. Thrown on the dirty straw, the sick are contorted and delirious like the victims of some massive shipwreck, their eyes already flooding with the resignation of the drowning. Nuns in the brown habit of their order scurry between their patients, removing pails of diseased slops, many wearing cotton masks packed with herbs in a desperate attempt to ward off the extraordinary stench of disease.